Manabu's incredibly detailed masterpiece measures 13 X 10 feet wide, and features a gnarly tree growing up and out of crashing tsunami waves and other destructive forces.

"Rebirth" was inspired by Japan's rebirth after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, so it was obviously a labor of love for Manabu as well as an epic scale way to show off his drawing skills.

“My goal is to faithfully express my view of the world in my composition, but I don’t intentionally depict detailed images,” he told the Chazen Museum of Art. “Because I see details when I observe things, rather than the whole, I find pen and ink to be the best tools to express how I see them.”

Margaret Rican of Seattle is having a hard time this year, as her Christmas lights keep disappearing. A squirrel has been making off with the bulbs one by one. The brazen their pulls off his heists right in front of her sometimes, while some capers are recorded from a distance. She uploaded a compilation of his trips to chew off and abscond with the bulbs one by one.

“This kind of behavior is reported each year as squirrels see the bulbs as similar to an acorn or fruit,” John Koprowski, a University of Arizona professor and noted squirrel expert, told The Huffington Post. “While hard to know if this indicates a difficult winter for food, this behavior is likely just the result of being an industrious squirrel and caching a bounty of potential food to be used over the course of the winter.”

Koprowski says that squirrels usually bury more food than they really need for the winter, and even forget where some of it is, so he should be fine.

Why is it that all the creeps decide to crawl out of their holes around Christmas? It's like they know we're at our most vulnerable during this time of year so they decide to act as the gremlin in our holiday cheer machine and muck up the works! As much as we wish these creeps would go away it also just wouldn't feel like Christmas without those flashers, muggers and other monsters of the same stripe hanging around town waiting to knock our holiday star down. You know, to keep us from feeling all warm and fuzzy like a Mogwai...

Celebrate the holiday season how you see fit- by wearing this silly Flashing Through The Snow t-shirt by JVZ Designs, it's sure to make people smile wherever you go!

The most despised song from my entire radio career (1982-2006) was "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer." It wasn't because there was anything inherently wrong with the song, except for the dead grandmother. What ruined the song for me was the dozens of requests for it every hour, even right after I had played it. Every hour, every December, for decades. Every year, a new cohort of children decide that's the one Christmas song they want to hear. Now it's a Christmas classic, with its own history.

It begins, like all Christmas fables should, with a blizzard. It was December 1978, and a San Francisco veterinarian named Elmo Shropshire, a.k.a. Dr. Elmo, was booked at the Hyatt in Lake Tahoe with his then-wife, Patsy. The couple had a comedy-bluegrass duo called Elmo & Patsy, and just before taking the stage, they got a visit from one Randy Brooks, a Texas singer-songwriter who’d played the hotel before them and gotten stuck there by the snow.

"I was never what I’d consider to be much of a singer," Dr. Elmo tells mental_floss from his home in California. "I always sang novelty songs, so it didn’t matter if I could sing or not. At the time, we were doing a lot of funny songs. Randy saw our show and said, 'I’ve got this song I think would be perfect for you.'"

Nowadays TV networks like TBS and AMC will play A Christmas Story for 24 hours straight, so viewers can watch their favorite holiday movie all day long if they want

And yet no matter how many times you've seen it there are probably all sorts of little things you missed or didn't really pay attention to- like Scut Farkus's braces.

A Christmas Story is set in the 1940s and yet Scut the Bully is wearing braces that are bonded to his teeth, which weren't invented until the 70s.

Ralphie's dad gets a colored bowling ball for Christmas, which wasn't invented until the 60s. When Ralphie almost shoots his eye out his glasses are knocked to the ground, where we can see they're three-barrel hinged- a style which didn't exist until the 1980s.

You see where I'm going with this? See how many historical inaccuracies you can spot next time you watch the movie!

Also watch for these cameos- director Bob Clark as Ralphie's Neighbor Swede (pic at top of post), and narrator Jean Shepherd (aka the guy who wrote the original stories the film is based on) as the cranky bearded man who tells Ralphie to get to the back of the line for Santa.

Didn't we just do one of these polls? Oh, that was in October. The Walking Dead will be taking a hiatus for a few months after this Sunday's episode, so if anyone is going to be killed, it will happen this week. Or else someone will be put in extreme danger and we'll have a cliffhanger until spring. The first half of season seven has been pretty miserable for everyone. Do you think they'll kill off any regulars this week? Place your predictions in the poll below. You can vote for more than one. And if you are current with the series, you can read some spoilerific predictions.

Who will die Sunday on The Walking Dead?

RickCarlDarylCarolMorganMaggieMichonneJudithSashaTaraRositaEugeneGabrielAaronSpencerEnidOliviaDwightSherryJesusGregorySimonNeganEzekialNo one will die.I don't know, just show me the results!

The municipal Christmas tree in Riga, Latvia, was switched on by a process that took 412 steps and ten minutes to complete. The video is much shorter because the part where they brewed coffee was condensed, and there may have been other shortcuts for the video.

You have to imagine how frustrating all the tests were for this, and how nervous the builders must have been to make it perform perfectly, not just for the waiting crowd outside, but in front of Guinness judges. The company Scandiweb sponsored the record-setting chain reaction that Guinness has enshrined as the World's Largest Rube Goldberg Machine. -via Viral Viral Videos

Writers love to toss around the term "historically accurate" in order to make their war stories seem more credible and realistic.

But they're ignoring the way battles were really fought and won back in the day, and the fact that dragons were fought by knights who carried around polyhedral dice to keep combat fair for both sides.

So if these writers want to keep their historical war stories up to snuff they need to add concepts found in this Pain Train Comic like rolling for initiative, critical failure and encounter engagement.

Only then can they move on to more advanced concepts like saving throws versus breath weapons and the true cost of having a cleric resurrect you...

Explorers, archaeologists, treasure hunters, there were many men who inspired the tales of intrepid adventurers that were eventually summed up in the character Indiana Jones. Let's meet some of them in this article from mental_floss magazine.

1. The Guy Who First Identified Dinosaur Egg Fossils

Some of the narrower brushes of Roy Chapman Andrews (1884-1960): “Once we were in great clanger from fanatical lama priests, two were close calls when I fell over cliffs, once was nearly caught by a huge python, and twice I might have been killed by bandits,” he wrote. (And like Indy, the American hated snakes.)

The sound is a bit reminiscent of a foghorn blast, but was actually recorded with brass instruments and piano. You heard it in the 2010 movie Inception, and in almost every movie trailer since then. It's known in the business as "BRAAAM!” How in the world did one discordant blast become so ubiquitous in Hollywood? A good bit of the credit goes to composer Hans Zimmer.

Part of it is the way his soundtracks are put together: Zimmer’s approach resembles the sampling we’re used to from pop music — themes are not simply repeated by musicians, but instead montaged by the composer. Over the last few decades Zimmer has created something of a cottage industry that churns out soundtracks at a Herculean clip: In 1989 he founded Media Ventures, which was later rechristened Remote Control Productions, a kind of soundtrack workshop where Zimmer and about forty collaborators crank out sample-based soundtracks that are largely created in-studio (their combined list of credits is too staggering to list here). If you’ve ever wondered why Batman Begins sounds like Pirates of the Caribbean, which sounds like The Da Vinci Code, Remote Control is the reason.

Now that LEDs allow us to connect many more strings than traditional lights, and even run on tiny batteries, I'm always thinking, "Where else can I put Christmas lights?" The answer is: one's beard. I don't have one, but if you do, lighting it up may become a trend this Christmas.

East Village E20, London is providing a beard pimping service to gentlemen wanting to adorn themselves with the yuletide facial hair accessory. Taking place at their Christmas Makers Market on Sunday 11th December, the stand will allow every hirsute gentleman the chance to get in on the trend – and provide some much needed smiles after a year of very serious news.

The line between fantasy and reality becomes blurred when Viking deities are invoked. Odin doesn't care a bit about the boundaries between LARP groups. But is he really who he says he is? Vidar must determine what is real and what is role playing before he can achieve total awesome Viking power. This video honestly gets better as it goes along. -via Geeks Are Sexy

For some reason something exciting happens every time you put the words "doctor" and "strange" together, and while the happening isn't always a good thing it's about as far as you can get from boring! There are good guys out there who sport the Doctor Strange moniker, and one is even the Sorcerer Supreme tasked with defending humanity from the timelessly evil Dormammu, but more often than not a strange doctor is a bad thing. And these twisted masterminds love to make a mockery of the medical profession, desiring nothing more than total destruction in the name of mad science...

You'll get a PhD in geek-ology every time you wear this The Doctors Strange t-shirt by Everdream, slip it on and embrace the madness!

Gelatinous cubes only eat people (and treasure and gear) because they're lonely, and like many emotional eaters they have a hard time finding a love who will understand their situation and won't judge them.

But green slime don't judge, and since both slimes are sexless and ambitionless masses who feel existence has no meaning you'd think the two dungeon dwelling creatures would make perfect partners.

However, as this comic from Joshua Wright shows, when lovers discover they have everything in common, including their slimy complexion, it can be hard to tell who's who!

A Turkish restaurant in London called Shish put up this sign last month. The Muslim-owned business is reaching out to the homeless and elderly of the Sidcup neighborhood to ensure no one is alone all day for the holiday.

Hasan Masud, who works at Shish Restaurant, told BuzzFeed News: “We’re just helping people.” He said the team at Shish also wanted to open their doors to the elderly because “lots of people stay home alone for Christmas… They don’t need to. They can come here and have some fun.”

After a great response on social media, the restaurant upgraded the sign.

A Muslim owned restaurant in London is ensuring 'no 1 eats alone on Christmas day' by offering free meals to homeless people and the elderly pic.twitter.com/M0CrKFnIj9

Looking to blow money on something utterly useless? Then head to Nordstroms where you can get your hands on this great $85 rock that at least comes with a classy leather pouch. It's as though the store itself doesn't know why you would buy it, since their description doesn't even know what the purpose of the stupid thing is, "A paperweight? A conversation piece? A work of art? It's up to you."

Just like many absurd Amazon products, the item is being lampooned on the reviews in Nordstrom's shop. Unfortunately, it seems Nordstrom doesn't have as good of a sense of humor because the item has since been pulled and they also seem to have removed all the reviews. While the small rock version was also removed from the store, the reviews are at least still there.

Combat veteran, Gemini astronaut, and Ohio senator, John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. The Mercury astronaut took off in the Friendship 7 capsule on February 20, 1962, and spent four hours and 55 minutes orbiting the earth. But that was just what he's most famous for. In World War II,

He became a successful fighter pilot who ran 59 hazardous missions, often as a volunteer or as the requested backup of assigned pilots. A war later, in Korea, he earned the nickname "MiG-Mad Marine" (or "Old Magnet A — ," which he sometimes paraphrased as "Old Magnet Tail.")

"I was the one who went in low and got them," Glenn said, explaining that he often landed with huge holes in the side of his aircraft because he didn't like to shoot from high altitudes.

Glenn's public life began when he broke the transcontinental airspeed record, bursting from Los Angeles to New York City in three hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds. With his Crusader averaging 725 mph, the 1957 flight proved the jet could endure stress when pushed to maximum speeds over long distances.

In New York, he got a hero's welcome — his first tickertape parade. He got another after his flight on Friendship 7.

That mission also introduced Glenn to politics. He addressed a joint session of Congress, and dined at the White House. He became friends with President Kennedy and ally and friend of his brother Robert. The Kennedys urged him to enter politics, and after a difficult few starts he did.

Later in life, Glenn spent 24 years as a senator representing Ohio. He ran for president in 1984. On October 29, 1998, he returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery at age 77. John Glenn died Thursday at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

A lighthouse keeper stumbles on a surprising discovery that changes everything. The implications are disturbing, when you consider where he is and what he is supposed to be doing. You know, just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. Or is this a psychotic break, brought on by isolation and monotony?

Simon Scheiber worked on this award-winning stop-motion short for seven years (we assume he also had a day job). It contains over 14,000 individual photographs and incredible details. See some photos from the making of The Lighthouseat its website. -via the Presurfer

When parents tell stories to their children, we get an image of fantasy creatures that's all our own. Later we become more attuned to the pop culture depictions of them, like the elves from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and the dwarves (or dwarfs) from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But in 2016, mentions of these characters are most likely to make us think of Lord of the Rings. The movie version, where hobbits, orcs, elves, dwarves, and men all have their distinctive accents.

Throughout The Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the reams of related histories Tolkien wrote about Middle Earth, he established whole societies, histories, and languages for a handful of races that still inform how they are depicted today. Elves are ancient, beautiful, and have pointy ears; dwarves are short, tough, and love to use axes; orcs are filthy brutes who live for destruction.

Of course the original readers couldn’t hear what Tolkien’s creatures sounded like, but the intense focus he placed on developing their languages gave people a pretty good idea. “Tolkien was a philologist,” says Olsen.“This is what he did. He studied language and the history of language and the changing of language over time.”

Tolkien would create languages first, then write cultures and histories to speak them, often taking inspiration from the sound of an existing language. In the case of the ever-present Elvish languages in his works, Tolkien took inspiration from Finnish and Welsh. As the race of men and hobbits got their language from the elves in Tolkien’s universe, their language was portrayed as similarly Euro-centric in flavor.

Tolkien was only partially responsible for the accents of his creations. He did establish that they sounded different from each other, but what those languages sound like changed over time as various interpreters added their own ideas. Did you know that Tolkien imagined dwarves sounding like Israelis? Read about the evolution of fantasy characters and how they speak at Atlas Obscura.

We knew people would use GoPro cameras to film every kind of physical activity imaginable, but the GoPro is showing us so much more than extreme sports and stunts.

They're letting us take a look inside stuff like never before, satisfying our curiosity with video footage from inside places where full grown adults simply won't fit- like inside a dishwasher while it runs through a full wash cycle.

Want to get in the Christmas spirit? Saturday Night Live has been bring us Christmas skits for over 40 years now, and of course, some of them stay with us. You can relive some of the best of them: Eddy Murphy in Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood, Alec Baldwin in Schweddy Balls, The Lonely Island's Dick in a Box, Chevy Chase in Christmas at the White House, and more, as they are all embedded at TVOM.

Instagram Metalslimer isn't afraid to cosplay male and female characters -only unlike most people who chose to do that, he is anything but androgynous. But that's precisely what makes his female cosplays so memorable -especially those Disney babes.

While his Jessica Rabbit is hilarious, the fact that his Belle cosplay looks like Gaston snuck into her wardrobe and got a little crazy.

Oh the things that giant Lady Liberty has seen, as she watches over a city that's always on the brink of utter destruction. When dark forces look for a place to set up shop they tend to choose New York for a good reason- the overcrowding and urban density helps cover up their operations. New Yorkers grow accustomed to seeing such strange sights they don't think twice when a Stragoi sucks the blood out of its victim on the sidewalk, they just strut on home to their overpriced apartment and turn on the TV!

Keep your wardrobe scary cool with this New York INFECTION t-shirt by ALIENBIKER23, it's a new way to say "I heart NY" and is sure to make your fellow fans his with delight!

You can see that the secret is that the coffee stirrer is segmented, so once he figured out what notes they played, he worked on the pattern of the tune itself. You have to wonder what kind of boring job would lead to such a hobby. -via Tastefully Offensive

Peanut shells seem like a strange medium for sculpture, but talented miniature artist Steve Casino turns ordinary peanuts into pop culture icons with so much character they could hang out with Mr. Peanut.

Scratch that, I don't think Mr. Peanut is cool enough to hang with Steve Casino's creations, plus Mr. Peanut is all posh while the Casino crowd is a bit rough around the edges.

Steve's peanut superstars look perfectly camera ready in the front, but he leaves their backsides bare so you can see their humble beginnings as an ordinary legume.

There have been many famous, legendary haircuts (for men) and hairdos (for women) in show business history. Well, we can start with the mop tops of the Beatles. Then we obviously drift over to the long hair, frizzly hair, shaved head of the respective three stooges- Moe, Larry, and Curly. (not to mention the split-in-the-middle part of Shemp). Alfalfa of the "Little Rascals" had his slicked-down cowlick, Harpo Marx had his curly blond locks, and Yul Brynner and Telly Savalas had their bald domes.

But Elvis Presley's combed-back, ink-black, slickly-oiled, long-sideburned haircut is known all over the civilized (and uncivilized) world.

The earliest Elvis hairstyle was not the jet-black we are all so familiar with. One can watch and enjoy Elvis' earliest TV appearances from 1956 and even his first movie Love Me Tender from 1956 and notice his hair a slightly lighter, dark sandy-ish shade.

It wasn't until his second (and best) movie Loving You in 1957 (Elvis' first color film) that we see the extreme ebony hair that was to be become his trademark. Although the King's hair was actually snow-white by the end of his life, he routinely had it dyed black from '57 on out.

A simple joke at work sends a guy over the edge. But it works, because the best puns, even the ones at second-grade level, only work if they make you groan. In this case, it's not the pun itself that induces the groan, but our hero's struggle with it. It's the latest from Teo, Hugh, and Corey at It's the Tie comics. Don't miss the bonus panel at the comic link. -via reddit

The Spanish Civil War saw the death of a half-million people between 1936 and 1939, but outside of Spain, it gets little space in history books because of World War II. That's also why many war crimes and shady dealings did not get proper documentation or an adequate investigation at the time. In the decades since, these mysteries remain. For example, what really happened to Dick Sheepshanks?

Dick Sheepshanks was a 27-year-old Reuters war correspondent during the Spanish Civil War, and his life was the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. Sheepshanks headed for Spain in 1937 with several other journalists to cover Franco’s Nationalists, but he was killed in December in the Republican shelling of the village of Cudete. When news of his death reached London, Sir Roderick Jones (who headed the Reuters News Agency and unknowingly shared a love interest with Sheepshanks) paid him all the tributes as befitted a national hero.

Then things get weird. According to some who had known him – including Jeanne Stourton, the aforementioned love interest – Sheepshanks had become suspicious of one of his fellow journalists, and the only one of the group to survive: Kim Philby. If that name sounds familiar, it’s for good reason – Philby went on to gain infamy as Britain’s most notorious traitor during the Cold War.

According to Stourton, Sheepshanks had grown increasingly suspicious of Philby’s motivations, and Philby took it upon himself to take Sheepshanks out of the picture. A comparison between eyewitness reports and photographic evidence has raised a number of unanswered questions, and it’s been suggested that Philby may have had a hand in the attack. What exactly happened to the Reuters journalists remains undetermined, and the death of Ernest Richard Sheepshanks has become a compelling Spanish Civil War mystery.